A small little update before the weekend starts. The previous night, I masked the last two parts for Velvet and painted them. Also, last night, I sprayed a layer of black enamel over the entire base. The reasoning for that should become fairly clear in the picture below. Today after allowing the enamels to cure for a day, I snapped some pictures and took a video for this technique. Video and link to full tutorial explanation after the jump.

First off, the ever tedious process of masking. Velvet’s pointy hat was masked off to paint the yellow stars. Masking tape, parafilm, 3m blue painters masking tape, and Mr masking sol was employed for this process. Once the masking was done, a quick shot of Finisher’s pure yellow was sprayed, then the masking implements were removed.

Velvet’s hair cap thingy had some beads and stars that should be painted gold. I did not want to use the same gold as I did for the base, so I used Finisher’s Knight’s Gold for this area. Tamiya masking tape, parafilm, mr masking sol, and blue sticky tac are used.

Finally, we return to the base for when we last left you, I had just sprayed on the gold over the gloss black. Last night, I sprayed on a layer of enamel gloss black over the entire surface. So this returned the base to the glossy black finish prior to the gold spray session. Letting this cure for a full day, a ronsonol lighter fluid soaked paper towel rubbed gently across the raised surfaces of the base’s details removes the black enamel, exposing the lacquer gold below. No clear coats were used so as to demonstrate the explicit use of the different paint properties for lacquers and enamels.

2 Responses to “Velvet Masking and Reverse Wash Tutorial”

ooh, interesting technique. Normally I’d just drybrush the gold onto the black base since I really really don’t like using laqueur paints (too damn smelly and expensive. It’s also not that easy to find round these parts) but the effect really does look awesome!!

I learned this basic technique a while back from an online store (now defunct, I guess) called “The Model Base”, which sold resin display bases for models – this was their recommended method for painting the raised details of the base.

As I recall, their recommended procedure called for a gloss-coat barrier in between the raised-detail coat and the final recessed-areas coat in order to protect the undercoats from the paint removal steps. You should be able to perform this technique without using lacquers so long as the undercoats have had sufficient time to fully cure – the fresh top-coat will be much more prone to removal efforts than the cured undercoats, and if you have a gloss layer in between, all the better.